Archive for March, 2013

I found this rather interesting item in the news a few months back. It was a determination of the United States best cities. The survey was done by the Milken Institute and is rather informative. If you’re not from the United States or even if you are you can check out your cities standings (if it’s listed) at the following links. This information is based on several factors and the determination is actually described by the institute’s site (first link).

The table below is just a standing for the cities listed from South Carolina. It’s not the entire table at the links above.

2012 Rank

2011 Rank

Metropolitan Area

State

9

11

Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville

SC

35

114

Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill

NC-SC

52

113

Greenville-Mauldin-Easley

SC

88

77

Augusta-Richmond County

GA-SC

108

181

Spartanburg

SC

129

115

Columbia

SC

165

128

Myrtle Beach-North Myrtle Beach-Conway

SC

127

141

Anderson

SC

129

151

Florence

SC

131

155

Sumter

SC

I found it quite interesting that Columbia is one of three cities listed from South Carolina that actually fell from their previous years listing. Of the cities listed it is in the bottom twenty percent and tied with Florence. The worst city of course was Myrtle Beach/North Myrtle Beach/ Conway for obvious reasons.

Now as to why Columbia is failing to move up the listings. There are several things that mark the decline of Columbia. First and foremost is the number of jobs (jobs that pay significantly more than minimum wage) in this city. The second and I feel should be the most important and will bring the first to this city is infrastructure. Third is a friendly government.

Now let’s talk about infrastructure. This should be a city’s first order of business since without a sound infrastructure jobs will NEVER come. The city of Columbia is and has been in hot water with the Environmental Protection Agency over it’s sewage system. Progress of repairing it has been slow at best and has cost the citizens of this city far more than they need it to cost. Why you ask? It’s because like all governments, the Columbia city council pools all the cities funds into one lump sum and spends it without regard to setting aside money for future needs nor repair of in use systems. It’s why not only the cities sewage system is still in need of repair (even through not one but several water rate hikes in recent times) but the roads, parks and other things are in need of repair or proper maintenance.

Where is all this money going you ask? Look around. You see block parties (not necessarily for the general public (i.e. normal citizen), parades, and other nonsense things being supported by city council in order to draw people to a DEAD downtown. Tourism isn’t happening in this city let alone this state because of several things that I need not mention. Tourism is also a dead industry like manufacturing has become in the United States.

Roads are seeing very little repair outside that which the city spends from state and federal funds they receive. One thing could help this issue other than further taxing an already burdened people. Think before you make repairs of streets. Two or three years ago, Columbia resurfaced several of their downtown streets instead of spreading the funds around the town on these projects. What happened after the resurfacing? Sure enough, not one month after the roads were resurfaced, the city started tearing up the NEW surface repairing stuff that could have been repaired before the resurfacing. Now they’ll scramble for more state and federal funds to resurface the same streets they tore up again instead of fixing other more in need streets. This isn’t new. It happens in many a city. Ill thought out maintenance and repair is killing things.

As to the parks, they aren’t getting but subsistence funding. Meaning, they aren’t getting anything more than what they need for basic maintenance. Water fountains in the parks aren’t being maintained where there are such. Restrooms which need repair, maintenance, or just flat need replacing are not getting done to attract citizens to the parks. The sad thing is I’ve talked to people who work these parks. They request the necessary things needed but are deniedwhat they need in order to make the parks a better place for citizens.

Now a word about public safety in the city. Columbia has recently added several new police officers to their ranks. However, they like other government employees don’t seem to be doing their job properly. Granted ALL police officers are underpaid for what they do, but most here are NOT performing the basics and the police chief seems to be spineless in his dealings with city council. What I mean by this is, the police chief’s officers are being redirected against the current homeless population by city council and not able or willing to perform the basic functions they are paid for (writing traffic citations to those that commit the simplest of crimes). In other words if you are homeless in this city as other major cities have homelessness as well, don’t expect a police officer to help you. If anything they’ll lock you up faster to get points with city council. If you’re an automobile owner, you can do no wrong. Run a red light, speed, wreck less driving, or hit a pedestrian, no problem. It seems pedestrians as well as bicyclists have NO rights in this town.

For Columbia to succeed in moving upward, they need to first task their police for properly. Secondly, think proper repair and maintenance of their infrastructure (funding for current and future). And last, FIRE their current city council. Then and only then will they have an efficient and well run city where government responds to their citizens instead of being self centered egotistical megalomaniacs like most government officials are. Maybe then and only then will the Columbia police force remove the tag for them as being nothing more than “Uniform Gang Members.”

This is a topic almost NEVERdiscussed and I feel it should. It seems that NOBODY and I mean nobody pays attention to this topic at all. Most people worry more about the nutritional feeding of school children than they do the homeless. Aren’t the homeless a member of society too? What puts more strain on the Medicare/Medicaid programs?

A while back, I did a posting on the various places that feed and shelter the homeless. Unfortunately, I did not go into great detail on the feeding of the homeless. I hope to correct that here with additional information.

It’s said around Columbia, South Carolina, that “if you go hungry around this town, you’re not trying to get food.” This for the most part is true. There are tons of places feeding at various times of the day/week. I’ll list several here:

Oliver Gospel Mission (from here out known as OGM)

Ebeneezer Church (usually prepared by the Salvation Army)

Trinity Church

St. Peter’s Church

First Baptist

Soup Cellar

various other groups large and small

The three main groups here are OGM, Ebeneezer, and the Soup Cellar. These are the people feed on a daily basis. Well OGM and Ebeneezer do. The Soup Cellar serves lunch during the weekdays but is one of the main providers of food. Here is where I’ll admit even I don’t have all the facts. However, I’ll tell you what I know about OGM and the Soup Cellar. I’ll relay what I’ve heard about Ebeneezer (we call it Ebisqueezer).

OGM I know well. You’ve read what I’ve already said about them as a shelter. Now you’ll know what think of their food service. My biggest complaint about OGM’s food service is not so much the food, which is often times donated and reasonably fresh (sometimes you get a meal that is prepared the same day, sometimes not). My biggest complaint against them is with a cook that adamantly will NOT follow the Department of Health’s food preparation regulations. But to talk of their food is another thing entirely. Yes, there are times you get what is suppose to be nutritious and it is a balanced meal if nothing else. Problem with any prepared food (most of their supplies come from U.S. Foods when it’s not donated), it’s not really nutritious at all. It’s more like institutionalized food. Over cooked and tasteless. I’ve had vegetables there that were like mush. Meats are mostly soy or fatty. Donated meals are often overcooked as well. Anyone in their right mind knows overcooking food ruins the nutritional value of the food not to mention fatty foods raise cholesterol levels. Oh wait, they think pumping too much overcooked veggies into you to up your fiber levels will prevent this. Bullsh*t! This isn’t the only thing I’ve been served there while I did eat (I no longer go to OGM for anything) there. I’ve actually had to eat or starve some stuff there that I wouldn’t slop a hog with and being from rural Michigan, I do know what they slop hogs with.

Now the Soup Cellar on the other hand does NOTserve anything but lunch Monday through Friday as well as most holidays. For the most part these people are a group of churches in the community who provide lunch for the homeless as well as those needy people who are barely getting by. Their lunch consists of two sandwiches of which on is PB &J (you all know what that means), soup during the winter months, fruit cups during the summer, and cold sweet tea. The bread here is generally fresh though at times it suffers. PB & J is generally nutritious and not overly fat. The soups during the winter are generally good though they tend to be either too much salt or too much pepper. And, as God is my witness, they use far and away too much beans in their soups. I can deal with green beans, Lima beans, or even butter beans in my soup but they’ve gone beyond even that making some of their soups totally inedible. When you can pick up an eight ounce cup of hot soup and the bottom comes filled with no less than four kinds of beans (some of which I’ve never heard of or eaten before other than the ones I’ve mentioned) you’ve gone far to far. Homeless people don’t need all the fiber and protein that they are getting fed. Now where the Soup Cellar gets decent at is getting other things like pasta salad or bagels or things like that in to supplement their usual offerings. I love pasta salad personally. However, their pasta salad often has far too much oil (oil based dressing) and again beans in it. The other pasta salad they serve from time to time is mayonnaise and mustard base. This type is excellent for the most part. But again, they ruin it by adding beans. I don’t mean just any beans either. I mean a bean that is red in color and leaves a foul taste in my mouth. When they use this bean in the soups the soups often come out looking like human manure and tasting just as foul (NO I DON’T EAT HUMAN FECES). At least when the soup is good you can have all you can eat of it.

Ebeneezer, I’ve only heard minute things about. Mostly the meals they are served are done by the Salvation Army or so I’m told. When one hears of the Salvation Army, they think how good they help the community. One only has to look at the South Carolina Salvation Army’s record. Especially the fact that it fired one of it’s Major’s for embezzlement/fraud and said person is still in jail last I knew. The only thing good I’ve heard about Ebeneezer is that they serve dinner at all. The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that their portion size is way too small. Go figure. Sounds to me like the Salvation Army hasn’t gotten rid of their corruption issues yet.

There are other places to eat for the homeless. These are the three main ones who serve a meal or sometimes two a day. Others (churches, private individuals, and small groups) seem to do better than the larger feeders. One church for certain takes precedence. That is Trinity Episcopal Church who does breakfast every Sunday. It is at least a nutritious breakfast of grits, scrambled eggs, sausage, warmed apples, milk, and coffee. The apples part is new as they use to serve baked beans and orange juice instead. Personally, I welcome that change with the exception of dropping the OJ.

Sadly, the homeless AREN’Tgetting the proper nutrition for what they have to face on the street. Often times the homeless are walking from one place to another to warm up in the winter. Most of these places feed a high fat, high protein diet instead of getting these people what they need. People burn a lot of energy quickly during the winter especially. A high carbohydrate diet is called for in the winter for the homeless. Fatty and protein rich diets do not metabolize quickly enough for the person to maintain energy for what they are doing. I can see the high protein diet in the summer where the homeless are less likely to move during the heat of the day.

Proper nutrition is everyone’s concern. Even today’s children are being fed better stuff in the school cafeteria now than what the homeless are fed. They at least get more choices. The homeless get little or no choices in what they are served breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

The only way we can get people off the Medicare/Medicaid merry-go-round is to educate them as to proper diet (yes, advertising actually is getting better for food substances on this issue). The homeless need better nutrition in order to face the environment (especially if they don’t go into local shelters). A great deal of the food fed to the homeless is largely FAT, PROTEIN, and SUGARS. These are absolutely the last things the homeless need at any time. Especially those that are diabetic as there are a large contingency of those that are homeless. Feeding a balanced diet of protein, carbohydrates (not over cooked vegetables), starches, and dairy products would go a long way in taking a number of homeless out of the health care system.

Far too often the homeless are getting fed some of the nastiest stuff known to man because it’s CHEAP and the providers can get away with extra money for themselves in return for providing a minimal amount of sustenance for the homeless. All to often, some of the food is day old stuff (mostly baked goods from a local bakery) or stuff that wasn’t sold at a local restaurant. OGM is notorious for doing the later as a cost cutting practice. Is it better than some of the stuff the relief organizations feed the third world countries? In one word NO!

We can do better than this in America. Yes there are children still not getting their nutritional requirements at schools across the U.S. But think about it this way. Many who are homeless or possibly about to become homeless will be that much more of a burden to society if their health fail due to improper nutrition. I myself have witnessed it’s effects on me. At one time, my body was eating it’s own muscle due to improper nutrition. Would you rather see children on the street the same way due to YOUR GREED! Enough said.